Fragments
by Josephinee
Summary: And he's simply baffled, because he can't see where she got the right to be ticked off at him, because she ruined him and look at where they are now - so far away from what they used to be it physically sickens him.


**disclaimer:** no copyright infringement intended.

**FRAGMENTS**

**Day 1.**

"This is fucking great."

His tone feels like a razorblade and his sarcasm is palpable in the room. She looks at him with an air of disdain, but refuses to satisfy his endless need for twisted disputes. He doesn't deserve to be satisfied and he never has. She's dead set on making that clear.

"Just marvellous," he continues, glaring at her with such an intensity it nearly makes her shiver. "It's all your fault, you know that?"

He's like water. Transparent and untouchable. He used to be an enigma to her, once, when she was young and stupid (and innocent?), but now she can read him like a children's book. If they two of them were playing some kind of psychological chess she'd have him cornered already. She _knows_ his tactics. She _knows_ he wants to pester her, get under her skin, so she'll finally give in and speak to him.

"Cat got your tongue? Not so eloquent now, are we?"

She won't.

Not now and not ever.

"I can't believe how pathetic you are," he says viciously, visibly enervated by her dismissive behaviour. "My two last months at Hogwarts and I have to spend it in an isolated room with _you_?"

They had a giant fallout in class yesterday – over something insignificant, which had posed as a disguise for all the meaning in the world – and Headmistress McGonagall had blown a fuse. She condemned them to sixty evenings locked up together for two hours. Of course they objected – not their finest hour, really – but McGonagall had not wavered one inch; even threatened to stripe them off their Heads titles. She'd shut up after that – he'd taken enough from her already, she wouldn't let him take away this too.

She stares back at him stonily, presses her lips together at the memory.

"With your abhorrent hair, and your hideously freckled face," he goes on, sneering. "I'm repulsed by you."

_You're lying,_ she thinks. _You're a fucking liar._

He shakes his head, like he's read her thoughts. "I mean it. I wish I was anywhere but _here_."

And because she still doesn't give the slightest flinch, this is the last thing he says. After that, all there is for the next hour is the ticking of the big golden clock above their heads.

**Day 7.**

He goes with it for five days.

On the seventh, however, he thinks he's ready to die a boredom-related death. He's never been a chatterbox – God _forbid_ – but even he has his limits. Restlessness has been brewing in his head for a long time, and when he glances at her impassive face, he's more than ever determined to get the rise out of her – no matter what it takes, no matter how depreciating or drastic the measures may be. He's growing mad and he's bitter and he wishes she would disappear in thin air and dissolve slowly.

"I hate you," he spats.

She rolls her eyes.

"Words cannot illustrate how much I hate you. You're fucking _neurotic_, yeah?"

Something flickers in her eyes and he knows she thinks he's lying.

"I mean, yeah, I thought you weren't like those other twats," he elaborates, aware that she doesn't want to hear it, "but I have never been so wrong in my entire life."

She looks at her nails. She's inspecting them and he wants to fling a brick to her head for playing the role that _he_ used to play, before she messed him up.

"You're a whore," he states.

It's harsh, he knows, but he's not going take it back.

"I can't believe people say you, _you_ of all people, have so much common sense," he titters. "_Matthew Boot_? How can you possibly want him?"

He remembers them kissing; he remembers the icy sensation firmly gripping around his throat. He remembers standing outside, unable to put any distance between him and what was happening behind the window, and her catching his eye after five full minutes – not even having the decency to look shocked. There'd been this... fucked up smile... and he'd bolted.

And because it's all horribly recent and new, familiar white hot anger surges through him.

"I don't get you," he snarls.

She displays no shame at all, just looks slightly uneasy now – biting her lip in that typical fashion of hers. And he's simply baffled about that, because he can't see where _she_ got the right to be ticked off at him, as _she_ was in the wrong and she fucked him over and look at where they are now – they're so far from what used to be that it sickens him physically.

"Who do you think you _are_?" His voice increases – he can't even help it. "Why are you writing me off like this?" It's like a button has been turned on in his mind, he spills and can't stop; is unable to stop. "_Matthew Boot_? And you're angry at _me_ for whatever reason I'm not even aware of?" He snorts while jumping on his feet. "Must be a fucking brilliant one, yeah."

Slightly startled at his sudden movements, her eyes grow in size and she opens her mouth momentarily. It ends as soon as it started, and then she reverts back to ostentatious indifference.

"Tell me," he presses on, fuelled by everything, looking down on her, "what made him better than me, huh? I didn't do _shit_ and you – "

His sentence vanishes mid-air when she stands up and slaps him hard across the face.

He's utterly thrown off – a medley of surprise, indignation and satisfaction preventing him from reacting immediately. He doesn't even know what he said that upset her so much now after all the other insults he's spewed at her, but before he gets to ask, she's already walked away.

He looks at the clock, rubbing his cheek, and sees that two hours have already passed.

**Day 16.**

She keeps ignoring him, or at least attempts to.

On day sixteen she's already practically asleep when he enters the room. Things are always easier when she doesn't actually have to see him – his blond hair, his aristocratic nose, his pointed features and his icy demeanour. He affects her still – he always has, after all – and she'd be damned if he ever realised that.

"I talked to Lily today," he speaks up, strangely neutral. "I had to threaten her, but, yeah, I finally _know_ something."

Her breath hitches, but she managed to keep her outward stillness.

"So that's why you hate me, huh," he says in a musing tone.

She raises her eyelids. Then she nods.

From troubled vision she catches him staring at her, but he refrains from responding for what seems an eternity. It does, in fact, take him thirty-two whole minutes, and when he does, the world is so surreal she's fairly certain she's dreaming.

"You know I didn't mean it." Then, quietly, "I'm sorry."

**Day 25.**

He honestly doesn't know what she feels when she thinks of him, and it's rather pointless to ask. He wonders though, at night, in the morning, whenever, especially when he's sitting on the other end of the room and she still doesn't want to talk.

It's weird, really. Because she used to talk all the time, about stupid things that didn't actually matter but to him they did, and he unconsciously eavesdrops on her conversations in class, just so he doesn't forget what kind of things. It had all seemed so irrelevant back then, but now he finds himself becoming more and more nostalgic and melancholic as time passes, wishing he could go back to those moments of late night heated discussions and forbidden swims in the lake.

"You know," he sighs, and he thinks she's sleeping because her breathing is so regular, "I wanted to tell them. I really did. Honesty is the best policy, but... I was never really an honest person, was I? I don't own up to things." He looks at the ceiling, searching for something that would take his mind off memories. "I never fucking own up to anything."

And that, he thinks, is enough truth for one day.

**Day 30.**

Sometimes she sleeps; sometimes she listens.

She's a wronged woman, she doesn't want to hear it anymore – but there's this little voice reaching from behind her neck, feeding her insecurities that murmur, _there is no closure in this case whatsoever_. Her wrath is slowly subsiding – even though she's still screwed up beyond whatever she considers healthy – and his voice is melodic enough. Drawling, smug, yeah, but melodic. She's always liked listening to him.

"The day before I was going to tell them," he says on the thirtieth day, "Father said he heard a rumour that you and I were having an affair."

She arches an eyebrow – she hadn't heard that before.

"He told me, yelled at me, that you were scum, a product of something so... filthy... that he would never allow you to stain our family name," he mutters, as if ashamed. "So I told him it was a scheme. I told him Stephano and I were in the middle of a bet and that I'd take you out in the future."

She doesn't know what to think. He's never ashamed – it's one of those things about him. He carries around his pride like the Olympic flame; it's an indissoluble part of his personality. And yet; here he is. On the other side of the room, his legs stretched out, his gaze unfocused and distracted, speaking to her in a tone that betrays a sense of unmistakable shame.

"That way, I thought, I could date you in public and... tell you my parents were okay with it," he finishes.

She read the letter. She read the words that told her _she was a joke_, and afterwards she cried and never spoke to him again, until that fight in the class room. She made sure to hook up with Matthew Boot right in front of his face, so she wouldn't have to explain and he therefore wouldn't have the chance to laugh at her for being so gullible.

"I loved you," he mumbles, nearly unintelligible. "I don't know why, but I love you."

She wants to think the feeling isn't mutual, but the beating under her ribcage shuts her up halfway through the thought.

**Day 41.**

He is torn between the disgust at her former tryst with Matthew Boot and the fact that no one compares to her. He's been offered chances that would make his mother lock him up, but he's too dejected to take up on them. Sometimes he doesn't even recognise himself anymore.

"Today Amaryllis nearly forced me into a cupboard," he remarks casually. "Man, that girl's got an iron grip, I have to tell you. I think my blood circulation was cut off, although I can't really tell because my skin's ghastly anyway. Perfect, but ghastly."

And then she shakes her head and starts laughing, something he hasn't heard her doing for longer than he cares to admit.

Before he knows it, he's laughing too.

**Day 42.**

"Remember the time _we_ shagged in that cupboard?"

He asks her this and she can't help but smile.

That happened on a Tuesday, once, between two classes, and she'd hated herself for being so careless, but it was _him_ and she'd been burning inside, aching for something that seemed at out of reach half of the time. She missed him so bad whenever he left her side that she grabbed every chance she got with him with both hands.

And now, she _still_ misses him.

She actually fucking misses the bastard.

**Day 50.**

"My family is just afraid, I think," he explains to her. "The world keeps twisting and turning... and they're not twisting and turning with it. They've been stuck in this hole since the Second Wizarding War, using shovels to dig deeper, building a buffer between them and the rest of the planet. They didn't want any change, and so, there they are. In their stupid hole."

She looks him straight in the eye, but doesn't ask anything.

"And I _thrive_ on change, you know? I always want something different. And _you're_ something different. You're more different than anyone I've ever met."

And as far as love proclamations go, she thinks, this is a solid effort.

The first time they kissed (drunk, challenging, something _new_) she'd been unprepared but strangely ecstatic, experiencing something weird she'd never experienced before, and it came to her that it didn't even matter if he was a good kisser, because _him_ being the one kissing her was good enough in itself. And that, she knows, is how in love with him she really was.

It doesn't even feel like it's been so long.

**Day 58.**

"So our last days, huh?"

She still doesn't reply. There's a pang in his chest and he feels pathetic.

"In two days it's all over. Kind of bizarre, if you think about it."

He clears his throat.

"Well, anyway. I just hope you're doing okay with your N.E.W.T.'s, but somehow I don't doubt that."

**Day 60.**

"My N.E.W.T.'s went absolutely fantastic."

Somehow, she doesn't doubt that.

"I feel like shit, though."

She looks up, caught off guard. He looks back at her with a frown and something she identifies as... sadness?... and God, how is that possible? He seems out of place and he _never_ seems out of place, and for the first time in two months, she actually really _believes_ what he's saying. It's a monumental shift - her believing him. It's like realising the planet isn't flat; it makes you wonder whether all you've ever known is truth or just the convenient version you made of truth.

"I'm afraid of what's to come. I'm afraid of the real world. I'm afraid I'd feel fucking alone." Truth, truth, truth. "I don't know what to do. What to become. How to spend the rest of my life," he groans slightly. "Everyone seems so sure... and I just feel stuck, you know? Stuck in a fucking desert."

She counts to ten.

"A desert?"

She's said something. It's been _two whole months_ and now she's never going to see him again and she suddenly feels an overpowering need to talk to him, because, Jesus, _this is it_. There are no days left after this one – this is the finish line, and she's never been more insecure about how this makes her feel.

At first he looks at her as if she's grown a third eye, but after exactly ninety seconds the shock subdues. He nods slowly, doesn't ask what prompted her to finally speak, but instead explains, "Like I can't... grasp anything. Nothing clear. Every time I feel like I'm getting close to a decision it just... slips right through my fingers. Like sand. And you know, I'm probably going to hate myself for admitting this to you, but," he pauses and hesitates, "but... I've had that feeling for a long time. Which is why I thrive on change in the first place. Nothing ever seems to fit. Except – except for you."

He doesn't look at her.

"That's..." she trails off.

"Yeah," he fills in, even though he clearly has no idea what she is about to say, since she isn't either.

And then, when she's afraid to lapse back in silence and tries to collect her thoughts, tries to formulate a reply that worthy of his confession, he gets up and walks over to her, catching her off guard by kissing her cheek.

"It's over."

After that he leaves.

And when she looks at the clock, she knows what he means. She watches him go and it's only when she calls out a useless "Scorpius!" that she tastes her own desperation on her tongue.

**Day 0.**

"Thought I'd find you here."

Hoarse voice.

"You did?"

It comes out as a statement rather than a question. He pops his elbows under his head and opens his eyes. She's hanging over him with a tiny smile on her face - her flaming locks redder and her ocean eyes bluer in this light, during day time, an aura of sunlight surrounding her. She's blinding and beautiful and brilliant and she scares the shit out of him (because she _always_ has) and he has to swallow deeply before he's properly able to stare right back at her.

"You know," she muses, while disappearing from his view and from what he hears, sitting down next to him, "it's not the end of the world. Leaving Hogwarts, I mean."

"I'm rational enough to know that."

"I mean it. You're that kind of person. You'll make it in a lot of places."

"You're one to talk."

She's not flawless, he knows that. But at least she's better than him – at least she has the guts to stay put. She faces the world, doesn't hide from it. If there's a problem, she sees it as a challenge. And maybe her solutions aren't that wise most of the time – aren't wise at all, really – but it are solutions all the same. She deals, and he doesn't, ever.

"You'll be okay," she repeats after a while.

He doesn't confirm. Instead he smiles vaguely. "Will I ever see you again?"

Silence.

Again.

"Yeah, I suppose."

He lets out a breath he didn't realise he was holding.

"You want to join me in my desert then?"

He lifts himself upwards to see her reaction. She's sitting Indian style, leaning backwards supported by her hand palms. Her face is wearing a scrutinizing expression, and she's biting her lip.

_Fuck_.

He did not _not_ want to see her again.

"If you let me be your oasis, yeah."

A warm glow stirs in his veins, and with startling realisation it occurs to him that it has nothing to do with the sun.

"Of course," he smiles. "I will."


End file.
